Knowledge

Having children is like planting seeds; we lay down the foundations but may never see the end result. That is the difference between the architect, and the worker. We are workers, not architects; doers, not leaders. We do our best, and then pass on. “We are prophets of a future not our own”1. You […]

While there has to be an absolute limit to what a person can be taught, and even more to what they can memorise, there is no limit to what a motivated person who knows how to think, and collaborate with others, can learn for themselves. Curious as it may seem the Department of Education […]

Go-go capitalism operates as an ever-quickening treadmill. None of our ancestors lived in such a complicated civilisation. There are no precedents to guide us, no wisdom that wasn’t made for a simpler age. We have changed our environment more quickly than we know how to change ourselves. In times gone by self-sustaining communities with […]

“Am I just thick”, asked a thirteen-year-old girl, “or am I only good at those things that really interest me?” Her friends grinned; “She’s very good at annoying the boys”. And then, “Does my brain get better through use?”, quizzed a third. “What sort of use?”, interjected a fourth1. What makes us the thinkers […]

Schools, as relatively self-contained communities made up of people of diverse character and ability should, in the way that they are organised, seek to reflect the dynamics of the less structured natural communities into which young people will inevitably graduate as adults. Schools will be at their most successful when they saturate children with […]

“The Great Exhibition has taught me so much I never knew before”, enthused Queen Victoria, “has brought me in contact with so many clever people I should never have known otherwise, and with so many manufacturers whom I would scarcely have met unless I travel all over the country. Some of the inventions were very […]

“Anyone who will look before him must see the growing political importance of the mass of the population. They will have power. In a very short time they will be paramount. I wish them to be enlightened, in order that they may use that power which they will inevitably obtain.”1 Until 1833 the […]

“Do not imagine that the knowledge, which I so much recommend to you, is confined to books, pleasing, useful and necessary as that knowledge is… The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet. Books alone will never teach it to you; but they will suggest […]

Too often we underrate our brains and our intelligence. Formal education can become such a complicated, self-conscious and over-regulated activity that learning is widely regarded as something difficult that the brain would rather not do. That is wrong, for learning is the brain’s primary function, its constant concern, and we all become restless and frustrated […]

Apprenticeship was an education for an intelligent way of life, a mechanism by which young people could model themselves on socially approved adults so providing a safe passage from childhood to adulthood in psychological, social and economic ways.1 Adolescents are neither children, nor adults. No longer content simply to be sat down and talked […]